Chinese Boy Tied to Tree and Beaten By His Father for Skipping Class

In southwest China, a young boy was found stripped down to his underwear with buttocks exposed, sobbing bruised and strapped to a tree. A crowd gathered to watch the father of this 8 year old boy beat him with a stick.

The young boy had apparently missed school a couple days and failed to return home on time. His father spotted him walking around near a local market and brought him home. His punishment was a public flogging.

Photographs of the young boy were posted online. The photographer says it was around 5 degrees Celsius when the child was stripped and beaten. In China, this type of corporal punishment is lawful as long as it isn’t excessive and seen as child abuse. The law even allows authorities to order parents to give ‘strict discipline’ to their children whenever they misbehaved.

A student at Marknoll Father’s School named Melody Koo wrote a letter to the South China Morning Post in she stated, “They believe that once the pain is over, the lesson will be engraves on the child’s mind and the mistake will not be repeated. It’s a way of “teaching” children right from wrong.’

A 2010 study by the Global Initiative to End Corporal Punishment suggests that half the girls and 3 in 5 boys in China are subjected to ‘mild’ corporal punishment monthly. Mild Punishment is described by the International Journal of Paediatrics as spanking, hitting, slapping or hitting with an object. Additionally, 10 percent of girls and up to 15 percent of boys reported being subjected to severe punishment such as hitting or slapping on the face, head or ears and in some cases beaten with an object.

It’s no doubt that the young boy in this story experienced severe punishment at the hands of his father. When he father saw him in the market when he should have been at school, the young boy tried to run but his father caught him, took him home and beat him. When the crowd gathered, interfering with the disciplinary session, the father untied the boy and took him away.